Art Cairo is holding its most expansive event yet.
The fair is running until Tuesday at the Grand Egyptian Museum. Galleries from 10 Arab and European countries are participating in the fair, showing a mix of works by established and emerging artists.
Here are six booths to look out for at Art Cairo.
Gallery One
The participation of Ramallah's Gallery One marks the first official Palestinian representation at Art Cairo. The gallery is presenting works by several young artists, who reflect on aspects of the Palestinian experience in different ways. These include sisters Reem and Majd Masri, whose works range between figurative, abstract and landscape pieces. The sisters each have a unique style, which is perhaps best seen in the landscape works. While both verge towards the abstract, Reem takes on a collagist’s approach to create her scenes, touching upon the experience of exile and remembering aspects of a homeland through fragments. Majd, meanwhile, depicts her landscape with a fevered acrylic.
The gallery is also representing other artists, including Ibrahim Jawabreh and Joseph Rishmawi.
Samar Martha, director and owner of the gallery, says it is always important to have Palestinian representation at a fair like Art Cairo because “art and culture serve as ambassadors to Palestine”.
"I believe in the power of art in connecting with humanity and promoting the Palestinian cause,” she says. “And that's my mission since I started working in the arts. I believe in the power of arts in connecting with human beings.”
Zaat
Zaat is not a gallery in a conventional sense. Rather, it is a digital platform that is dedicated to art from the Arab world, while also curating events and offering consultation services. Zaat is presenting works by four important Egyptian artists. These include Adam Henein, Gamil Shafik, Helmi El Touni and Bahgat Osman. The exhibited bodies of work differ widely in subject and execution.
Some of Henein’s pieces, for instance, draw from Christian iconography but with the minimal figurative style that he is known for in his sculptural works. Osman’s works, meanwhile, feature the vibrant colours and humour that the illustrator was known for, especially through his political cartoons. The portraits by Shafik fall in line with the figurative approach and aesthetics the artist is known for. Finally, the works by El Touni that are being presented present a mature take on the story of Little Red Riding Hood.
While several of the pieces bare the idiosyncratic styles of their respective artists, most have never been displayed in public before.
“What is special about this show is that these pieces were often displayed in homes and were not seen in public,” Lara Hajj Salman, founder of Zaat, says. “With the exception of Bahgat’s works, because he was an illustrator and worked a lot with the printing materials.”
Galerie Sanaa
Galerie Sanaa is a gallery in Utrecht, Netherlands, that focuses on contemporary artists from Netherlands, Africa and the Middle East. At Art Cairo, they are presenting a solo exhibition of the works of Raafat Ballan. The portraits teeter towards the uncanny, all rendered with the warbled, undulating effect that the Syrian artist is known for.
Ballan had exhibited a handful of paintings at a previous Art Cairo. The works were popular among local collectors, and inspired Galerie Sanaa to dedicate a larger space to the artist.
“His work was featured in a curated section,” Berthe Schoonman, the gallery’s founder, says. “Now, I'm here as his gallerist. We thought it would be nice to make a solo exhibition, which is quite different approach.”
Mashrabia
Mashrabia has a storied history in Cairo, representing several notable contemporary Egyptian artists including Adel El Siwi and Ahmed Askalany. The gallery is featuring several interesting works at Art Cairo, some of which touch upon aspects of daily life within the city.
These include works by Ahmed Yasser that take on the chaos of Cairo’s roads. Painted on tattered and unfurled pieces of canvas, the Egyptian artist reimagines scenes of traffic and accidents with a somewhat surrealist bend. In one, a monkey leaps out of windshields to attack a pedestrian in what is perhaps a symbolic representation of road rage. In another, a man is hurling towards the sky, his briefcase flying above him. The scene is perhaps an upwards view of a hit-and-run, with a road sign looming from behind a palm frond.
In Echoes of Liberty, Sami Elias presents an awe-inspiring work on wood that brings to mind the feeling of nostalgia. The work shows a woman posing in an orange dress reminiscent of 1970s fashion with slender palms rising behind her. The scene, however, has been blurred and painted thinly as to reveal the woodgrains.
Stefania Angarano, director of Mashrabia, says this is the second time the gallery is participating in the fair. The event, she says, is particularly important for local institutions as it gives them a platform to present works, both to local and international audiences.
“It was a good moment for me to participated because, because of the changes that has happened in Cairo in general,” she says. “More and more galleries are being concentrated in the Zamalek region, and some in the compounds. Mashrabia is based downtown, and there were other galleries there, but most of them closed, so I feel that I am alone. It’s important for there to be a fair. We need this. And I’d love to show our works because I am confident of the the quality of my choices.”
Fann A Porter
Dubai contemporary art gallery Fann A Porter has been participating in Art Cairo since the event’s inception in 2020. This year, it is presenting a thoughtfully curated selection of works by artists from various backgrounds. Gazan artist Mohammed Al-Hawajri, for instance, is represented through his digital works that are very different from his paintings, which often depict figures and scenes symbolising Palestinian life and identity.
The two exhibited works feature burgers. However, while one shows the buns replaced by cacti, the others swaps the meat for a spiny mass. The artworks are visceral, in the sense they target the viewer much in the same way that a fast food advertisement does, but instead evoking discomfort.
Meanwhile, the works of Khaled Jarada, also from Gaza, more directly reflect the suffering of Palestinians. His canvases features portraits rippling with an unnerving calm, signalling their subjects may be decades. Another shows legs jutting out from a tent, bringing to mind the displacement of Gaza’s inhabitants.
The gallery is also showcasing the works by Jordanian-Armenian artist Arda Aslanian. The paintings convey a gamut of emotions by concealing rather than revealing. Dresses drape over unseen bodies, forming creases and folds that leave it upon the viewer to impose their own readings.
Ghada Kunash, managing director of Fann A Porter, says that after years of participating at Art Cairo, she has become familiar with the tastes of local collectors and audiences. “We were a bit scared in the beginning, because we know that that Egyptian collectors usually buys works by Egyptian artists, but we actually sold many artworks in that first year,” she says.
Kunash adds that while abstract works are proving to gain traction, figurative pieces remain the most popular. “They really love the figurative, and they still love the figurative.”
Arame Art Gallery
Another returning participant is Arame Art Gallery. While the gallery is primarily based in Yerevan, Armenia, they also have branches in Beirut and Kuwait. This year, the gallery is showcasing several popular Armenian artists, including Sarkis Hamalbashian, who often renders scenes from rural life in Armenia with a mesmerizing and layered impasto. Works by Avetis Khachatrian are also being exhibited, and feature portraits of people depicted with a whimsical flair, with exaggerated facial features that emerge from the canvas and are juxtaposed by bodies that bear slight resemblance to the medieval two-dimensional depictions in miniatures. Armen Gevorgian’s Fisherman is also a highlight. The painting features a seaside scene with a crowd of Gevorgian’s unique pillar-like figures, each of which seems to be emanating their own source of light. Like most of the artist’s oeuvre, the work is imbued with a surreal aura.
"The selection is based on the quality of the artworks and based on what the market likes to see,” Michael Vayejian, a representative of the gallery, says. “From our previous experiences, we noticed that collectors here like figurative and surrealist artworks more than abstract.”
Vayejian says that Armenian artworks are proving popular among Egyptian collectors, which perhaps isn’t surprising given the historic connections between the two countries and the presence of a thriving Armenian community in Egypt.
“There is an appreciation of the Armenian community historically in Egypt,” he says. “The art fair itself has progressed a lot, and we’re sure it will continue to grow.”
